“Find your passion.” We’ve all heard this term mentioned in some motivational speech or article way too many times. Throughout our lives, we are fed this idea that through extra-curricular activities, clubs, internships, university classes, or even jobs, we will discover our ‘calling’; that which we will love and can explore.

As romantic as this may sound, it may not be true for the majority of us. The phrase ‘finding your passion’ implies that your passion is something inherent or inborn — waiting to be found. However, a 2018 study done by psychologists from Stanford and Yale — NUS College Singapore would suggest otherwise. …

Hands-free technology was supposed to make driving safer by allowing people to communicate using their cell phones without engaging their hands in holding the device.

Has this technology made driving safer than it was with handheld phones? Yes. Ample empirical evidence exists to suggest exactly that. Even if we move past empirical evidence, simple common sense would suggest that being able to have two hands at the wheel would be safer than one while negotiating a sharp turn. Not having to be visually engaged to dial a number and using voice dialing instead would obviously cause less interference than looking away from the road. …

Have you ever stayed up late to watch a sports game? Pulled an all-nighter to study for a test? Woken up at 4 AM to catch a flight? Slept late after a crazy party? If your answer to any of these questions was yes, chances are that you have lost out on a full night’s sleep in the process.

All of these excursions are a natural and often regular part of our lives. Nevertheless, the sleep we lose for them is not without its repercussions. …

A disclaimer before I start — by no means do I consider myself an expert writer. I actually decided to write this article while reading several articles about writing improvement. So, while it may seem like I am preaching tips on how to write better, it is, in fact, secondhand knowledge from my efforts to improve my own writing.

However, I do know a few things about good UX design and Human Factors design principles. So, as I read through some helpful articles on writing, I started to notice a few recurring themes in the advice offered, leading me to realize that writing a good article is not too different from designing a good user experience. …

The pandemic has had a tremendous impact on the education system. Transitioning to an online learning system has made us all realize — you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Given the far-reaching consequences of the mass transition to online learning, much has been written about it. Several conversations are centered around the perfect home set-up for children or university students, the best platform for teaching, having a good internet connection, etc. While these factors are important in their own right, I think they detract from the core goal of education — learning.

Strip away the frills, and you find that the purpose of teaching is achieving transfer. We want the students to be able to transfer their learnings from the classroom into other problems and activities. For example, students learning multiplication in middle school should be able to apply it to solve word problems. University students taking a course in Research Methods should be able to analyze any data sets given to them or apply them in their theses. …

The rhythm of technological development in recent years seems to be as fast-paced and chaotic as the beat to Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’.

🎵 Smartphone notches, Apple watches
Bitcoin mining, 3D printing
Touch bars, Self-driving cars
Voice-activated lamps.

Robot vacuums, Work on Zoom
Home theaters for your living room
Smart TVs, Face ID
My toaster’s got a touch screen 🎵

In this case, we did start the fire, and it’ll keep burning if we don’t try to fight it.

Modern technology is highly fluid and dynamic. This means that UX professionals have to deal with a rapidly changing canvas and work environment. A design from 2 years ago may not be relevant anymore due to advancements in technology. Often, interface designs are found wanting because the designers behind them were chasing demand rather than anticipating it. …

Practice makes automatic, not perfect; unless you do it right.

At least that’s what K. Anders Ericsson, who coined the term, ‘deliberate practice’ would have you believe. Whenever we acquire a new skill, we usually progress through the following three stages:

Cognitive Stage

The focus here is on understanding the skill and the avoidance of mistakes. Performance at this stage will resemble that of a beginner.

Associative Stage

As a result of gaining more experience, performance becomes smoother and the tendency to make mistakes is reduced. New associations between various aspects of the skill performance are formed in our minds.

For instance, if you have taken up cooking, you start to learn when to adjust the heat depending on the look and sound of the food you are cooking. …

Like many, I spent the few days following November 3rd obsessively checking my phone and laptop for the latest vote counts and results. So often, that whenever I now type “U” in Google’s search bar, the top automatic suggestion is “US election results”. It’s rather annoying now that I don’t want it, but it illustrates my point.

Stressing over the potential outcome was doing me no good, so I decided to allocate my cognitive resources elsewhere and started thinking about how media outlets were representing their data. …